Setting up your own business- Part 3

In my last blog, I ventured to say that honesty and integrity would be all enduring in your new business. Furthermore, we established that you had the support of your family and were all set to step forward except for the million-dollar question… `how do I move forward with this idea?

So lets see if we can get you moving forward a bit….

The huge difference or perhaps one of the huge differences between running your own business and working for someone is that to begin with, unless you have pots of money, you’ll find yourself being the director, the manager and the technical bod all at the same time.

In my experience, if you’ve got this far then by definition you are an entrepreneur! You have that rare drive in your belly, which will drive you forward whatever is put in your path. There isn’t that many of you (as a proportion of the population) and initially you’ll find yourself having to do every job that’s required. You’ll find yourself running a business and muddling through, then asking yourself why things perhaps don’t work quite the way you had hoped and wondering how to make certain things happen and happen more efficiently.

Immediately the role you’re fulfilling is that of director, even before you put pen to paper, because that’s what a director does. You’re the person with the ideas and nothing will happen without them. The challenge now though, is how you take that idea forward into a profitable company or to some extent, to do some research to confirm whether or not there’s a market for your product or service, which I’ll write about in another blog.

Well in short ,the answer to the “how do I move forward with my idea” question is training or perhaps I should say “learning” and of course there are many, many books on the subject and you could go to the library and take a few out to learn from. Then again, you can plough through many books and still not be as clear as you could be. I’m one of those people who reads profusely, but there are those like my husband who are much more visual, thus videos or a training course are more suitable. If you are unsure of anything or want to develop your skills try short courses and development programmes where you can learn to broaden your ideas and master budgeting and pitching for investment as examples.

One really good option to help you move forward is the UK Governments own website and you’ll find a lot of useful information here https://www.gov.uk/starting-up-a-business, with help lines offering free advice and several very professional video’s such as “understanding cash flow” and “choosing the right IT (system)” although even those may be a bit further forward than you are now and you just want to make a start.

I believe you would find it invaluable to look at the National Enterprise website (http://www.nationalenterprisenetwork.org) which is a not for profit organisation who are there to help people just like you set up in business. In their own words, to “help people looking for core support in starting up”. These are people who are there to help you and it will cost you nothing to make contact with them.

Well if I follow the format of some many books on this subject I would start spewing statistics on the number of companies that fail blah, blah, blah, but my guess is that if you’ve got this far you’re probably fully aware that if you get it wrong everything could go to pooh but life is too short to have regrets and you don’t want to look back and think “if only” I had tried.

Until next time

Name: Alexandra Eager About: Alex has worked as a Financial Controller and Finance Director for many years for a variety of companies across a range of industries but more recently she has moved away from accounting working for an internet marketing agency as Finance and Operations director, primarily overseeing the finance functions and search engine optimisation (SEO) for clients. Follow Alex on G+ and on Twitter @Alex_BusDirUK
Alex runs her own company with two fellow owners developing a suite of e-commerce web sites and promoting them directly. “I found that SEO and finance were quite compatible both needing an eye for detail, research and analysis as well keeping up with new developments and changes.”